51 Comments

Pelosi gets flown to an airbase and immediate hip replacement surgery. Here, regular people wait for months or longer for such surgery.

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Amen. I have to have work done.. all they’ll even tell me is “next year”.

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It took me 9 months to get appointment with urologist and another 6 to get much needed surgery; and I have very good insurance. And I didn't get flown to hospital on a military transport.

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The doc that prescribed my diuretic left weeks ago. Still waiting to have it refilled. Last April bag with it lost to Mazatlan (eclipse). Doc in pharmacy gave me prescription free. Very high temp. August in Paris increased edema. Walked into local clinic at 1830; apologized not see me until next am. After bloodwork second visit Sunday! received Rx.

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Amazing!

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Sounds about right. When the appointment finally rolls around whatever I wanted to be seen for has invariably gone away on its own and forgotten, or gotten worse. (Hey, since we’re talking about medical stuff and urologists, I get to have my very first cystography! So excited. They wouldn’t tell me anything about it but it sounds like fun!)

Holy crap, I wish. These “procedures” on me of which I was so blissfully ignorant not too long ago just keep getting better and better.

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I will just say it is not a fun procedure. I have had it.

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Thanks, this is cheerful. Yeah, I have avoided watching vids or anything. They make it sound like no big deal. Except for the recovery, unfortunately I have heard about that part. It's also the results that could be equally unpleasant. "Urolift" was mentioned, I'd have to guess you may have heard of it. :-(

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Strike my last comment about cystography, that is just pictures of bladder. You will be out and won't feel a thing. I was thinking of cystoscopy. That was agonizing.

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Urolift is a procedure for BPH. I had a different procedure for same condition called HOLEP. Excellent efficacy. No long lasting side effects. Takes a few months to recover. In the throes of same as we speak.

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The only octogenarian who seems to have his marbles & be a force of good, is Bernie.

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I've thought about this a lot in the past few years. Part of me thinks that people my age and younger (Gen X to Zoomers) have soured on seeking elected office. It just doesn't seem worth it from a personal/health angle. Sure, it's a great way to make connections and get rich, but I'll pass. With my political views I wouldn't have a chance at getting elected anyway. AIPAC would destroy me.

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As an official Old Lady (81), I’m well aware of my limitations, which thankfully are mostly physical. There is no way in hell I could run the most powerful country in the world, and honestly I’d go nuts if I were a member of the do-nothing-but-argue Congress. But when you think about it, members of Congress hardly work. Six months a year, in theory, but they don’t even have to show up when they *are* in session, with great pay and benefits we can only dream of. I work harder at my volunteer job. So what’s their incentive to retire?

If ex-Congresswoman Pelosi had broken her hip on a European vacation, she wouldn’t be flown on government planes to government hospitals. She’d have to - heaven forbid - figure it out herself and pay for it.

My tongue is firmly in my cheek. These old geezers need to go. I don’t think the Founders anticipated career politicians when they opted not to set term limits.

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An age limit seems like a logical idea.

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I’d rather have term limits. We’re stuck with the same people for decades, yet wonder why nothing ever changes. Almost fits the definition of insanity.

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Wrong, term limits and age limits, would eliminate people like Bernie. Such are anti-democratic, as it removes peoples' decisions.

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People were lucky to make it to 60 back then.

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Since ancient times, once one survived childhood disease many lived to old age (over fifty) some very old. One can verify this using this interactive graph:

https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/055/

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Interesting, though that chart only goes to 1900. Here's additional information that I found: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy-globally. and https://www.verywellhealth.com/longevity-throughout-history-2224054.

It seems like 60 is a better number for me to use.

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Historically, if a person reached the age of ten, their life expectancy would be significantly higher than the average life expectancy at birth, with estimates depending on the time period ranging from around 50 to 60 years, meaning they could expect to live several more decades after turning ten, especially in more recent historical periods where medical advancements improved survival rates.

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After weeks and weeks if lost time, Biden finally stepped aside as the Democratic candidate. When he endorsed Kamala Harris, I noticed she was 60 years old. The American

media described this as passing it off to a new generation.

The new generation of presidential hopefuls is 40 years old. Lots of people in their 20’s and 30’s want to hear about climate mitigan. I

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Wow. It’s so weird that these guys seemed to all be in place when I was a kid; now pushin’ 70 and they’re mostly all still there. (70 pushes back, btw). It’s never been more clear now what a phenomenal problem this is. They’ll probably outlive me. (Well, McConnell maybe, the other oldest tortoise, Jonathon, just turned 192.)

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Genuinely mindboggling

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I can’t edit it at the moment, but journalistic integrity demands I issue a correction, it’s actually “Jonathan” (and I probably got his exact age wrong too.)

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Agree with everything here. These people were elected by their constituents, though. The problem originates there.

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That's why I'm saying the solution is for people to move past this neurosis about it being too mean to state the obvious here. These people aren't your grandparents, they're powerful officials that are supposed to be accountable to us.

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A lot of these districts have been rigged such that there is no competition except in the primary and the Democratic party a couple years ago said it would not do business with any consultant or biz that helped a candidate defeat an incumbent.

It's all rigged

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This is a characteristically thoughtful post from Ken. Having challenged Pelosi from 2018-2022, including in the 2020 general election, I appreciate its emphasis on how the careers of entrenched politicians (or a dynastic oligarch) impede progress.

That said, describing our problems today as rooted in gerontocracy is frankly charitable, and overlooks the institutional rot that extends well beyond career politicians. It has attained constitutional dimensions, and even a new generation of voices would be likely unable to repair it. I wrote a post about this precise theme two years ago. The subhead captures the gist:

"America's institutions—not only the octogenarian careerists who have co-opted them—chain our futures to the failures of the past....

America’s claim to democracy has been reduced to a cruel joke—not (only) because the President and Senate Majority Leader are so old that they would be ineligible for any number of less powerful positions, or because both corporate parties are led by oligarchs, but—because We the People have been cut nearly entirely out of the democratic process."

https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/neither-mcconnell-freezing-nor-biden

I'd be eager to invite any thoughts!

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Is it because of the boomers? Although the oldest boomer was born in 1946, so 78. Pelosi and McConnell are older than the boomers.

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I'm not so sure. It's their policies not their age. Do the younger have better policies?...

I've already stated one must evaluate the younger politicians, before claiming it's gerontocracy. Neocracy may be just as bad. Furthermore, for many the gerontocracy are doing "just fine".

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Man, that chart showing the increase of Congress over 70 says it all. It inversely correlates to the need for new blood. Never before have Americans universally called for new options to vote for, while never before have these Skeletors in power death gripped on to their positions. I guess they’ll all be rolled out on gurneys one by one looking like extras from “The Walking Dead.”

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What you're arguing may be invalid -- Until the younger cohort is evaluated and fond to your liking, term limits are useless.

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Remember you must die

Memento mori literally means "Remember you must die". The early Puritan settlers were particularly aware of death and fearful of what it might mean, so a Puritan tombstone will often display a memento mori intended for the living.

We see these clinging to power. They need to support those following and exit gracefully.

I'm old and want to make sure my successors take over with ability and intelligence. To do otherwise is foolishness incarnate.

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As someone a month shy of being an octogenarian myself, I’d like to think perhaps it’s more than simply age that’s at issue here. Would we really be better off with the likes of Tim Cotton, Mike Johnson, Kristen Sinema, Matt Gaetz, or J.D. Vance, as our top leaders? We’re likely to find out with some of them.

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I think this is connected, though not entirely, to the corruption of our political system. If a person is in office and goes with the program of lobbyists, which McConnel certainly did, then the lobbying parties can be counted on to come up with the ever-increasing amounts of money needed to "be competitive" in running for re-election. Combine this with the sad fact that many voters will go with name recognition, not knowing much if anything about the position of the candidates on the issues, and you have a recipe for staying in office forever.

Our democracy is effectively dead with the exception of isolated places that have a gung-ho group of voters (like the Arab-Americans in the Dearborn MI area that can get Rashida Tlaib in office regardless of any lobby wishes). There will be no change until Congress overturns all the Supreme Court rulings that have made dollars the only vote that counts.

That photo of McConnell being assisted is truly telling, he looks like he is ready to go at any moment.

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This is why Kamala was unwilling to criticize or break from Biden in any way shape or form. Because it wasn’t “nice”.

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We have a gerontocracy in this country.

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Term limits!

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This was strictly a "vanity, vanity, all is vanity" accident. Pelosi was wearing her trademark high heels. Kind of risky going down a marble staircase in that kind of footwear. I would have never had the nerve to do something like that. She could have avoided the accident by either not wearing more common-sense footwear, or taking an elevator. I'm sure the building had one!

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Correction: "by either wearing more common-sense footwear"...

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